Virginia Soaps and Scents

I really love special bath stuff, but I don’t often get to use it. I was so excited to see Virginia Soaps and Scents on the review list for the Homeschool Crew. Finally a review item just for me! (Though I did share with my daughter.)

You may be wondering, as I was, why a soap company would want to market their product through the homeschool community. It’s because Virginia Soaps & Scents is a business run completely by a homeschool family. They actually got their start making soap as a result of a soap-making project while studying Colonial History!

I received a special variety sample pack of products to try. The package included:

• Handcrafted Olive Oil Soap in 3 different scents (Coconut Lemongrass, Fresh Orange, and Oatmeal, Milk and Honey)
• Shampoo Bar (Ginger Lime scent)
• Laundry Soap Kit

Soap
I usually shower with body wash. I like the bubbles, the scent, and the moisturizers in body wash. Even though I typically don’t like soap, I was very pleased with these soaps. They lather well, smell good, and are very moisturizing. I especially like the oatmeal, milk & honey soap because it has oatmeal that exfoliates too. My daughter has especially dry skin and has liked the soap. She didn’t find any particular improvement in her skin, but didn’t have any extra dryness either.

Shampoo bar
The shampoo bar was a totally new concept to me. I used it several times. While I liked how clean it got my hair at first, later it seemed to make it so clean it was a little hard to manage. I have long, curly hair that I need to condition to keep from frizzing. So, I gave the bar to my daughter to try. She has long, fine, straight hair that is just starting to get oily. (She’s not even 10. Having my kids grow up is going to be hard on me!) I had been frequently questioning her after she washed her hair. Did she use too much conditioner? Did she rinse it well? It just seemed to look dirty all the time. The shampoo bar worked wonderfully on her hair. It was finally clean!

Laundry Soap
Homemade laundry soap? Really? Is there a good reason for using it? I did a little research on soap versus detergent. The main difference from what I was able to determine is that soap is made from natural ingredients and detergent from synthetic ones. This is the best (unbiased) website that I have found. I’m still not satisfied with that explanation and hope to do a little more research in all my free time. (Meaning, I doubt it’ll be very soon.)

I decided that since my daughter was helping me to test the soap and shampoo bar, I let my son help with the laundry soap test. I had him film and edit the making of the laundry soap. This will show you how easy it was. (The process is sped up for the video, of course.)

I didn’t not notice any differences in performance between the homemade laundry soap and my usual laundry detergent (All Free and Clear). I did all of our laundry for over a week with the small sample I received. I saw warnings on-line that using soap to wash clothes was not a good idea because it didn’t rinse out as well as detergent. However, I didn’t use the soap long enough to test if there was any long-term deterioration of our clothes. Assuming that it doesn’t hurt the clothes, it definitely would be less expensive to use the homemade detergent kits. Virginia Soaps and Scents has calculated the cost of using their kits at 7 cents per load! Whether that savings is significant enough to go to the trouble of making the detergent is a matter of personal choice. It’s not much trouble to make, but laundry detergent is not a major expense. If you’re trying to cut all possible costs or are interested in using more natural ingredients, then you should definitely try the laundry soap from Virginia Soaps and Scents.

There are even more great products available at Virginia Soaps and Scents. Disclosure: This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are our own.